Our manifesto must recapture our spirit as the party of youth

By Andrew Gwynne

One of the most enduring appeals of the Labour Party is that it continues to be the party of youth. I joined the Labour party aged 17 when we had a real mountain to climb. Many of the people I joined the party with had rejoiced when we saw the end of Thatcher’s reign and thought that the Labour Party’s time had come to take back the country.

But it was a huge disappointment to see John Major sneak to a surprise victory in 1992. I mention that election defeat because it took a huge influx of ideas and energy, largely from those in Young Labour at that time, to make sure we were in a position to win in 1997 with New Labour.

I was determined that we should do all we could to reshape the Party and make it more relevant to ordinary people and become more electable. That’s why I became a councillor when I was 21, which back in 1996 made me the youngest councillor in England.

In the build up to the 1997 general election we had something that we need to now recapture, that we were the Party of youth and ideas. I remember many of the election rallies during the 1997 campaign that figures such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown addressed had a real energy, because we knew we had the ideas and vision to deal with the problems that the conservatives had caused.

It’s probably no coincidence that at that time the Labour Party had 400,000 members and Young Labour were key in recruiting many new people to the New Labour vision. The victory of 1997 was in large part due to energy and dynamism that young Party members brought to the campaign.

Now, at 34, I am the youngest Labour MP in this Parliament, and walking down the corridors of the House of Commons sometimes you get a shiver down your spine. It’s extra special for me to represent the Denton and Reddish constituency where I grew up.

But I know what it took to get Labour into government I have always believed that engagement with young people and having young people involved in politics is crucial to our on going success.

We need to take opportunities such as this Saturday’s Labour Youth Day, to allow young people to become partners in defending the successes of the Labour government and re-engage young people with our Party. We should never forget the lesson of the 80s and 90s when we largely lost touch with our key supporters, the people whose support we need to have a Labour Government. We need to remember why we won the past three general elections – we genuinely engaged with people and had progressive policies that could improve life chances

However, there is more that we can do. I fully support the decision taken to lower the voting age to 16, which will be part of the next Labour General Election Manifesto. We as a movement have consistently argued and legislated to expand social, civil and political rights. Votes at 16 is an idea whose time has definitely come.

Young people can now also join the party under the new £1 Youth membership rate, offering a good inducement to become involved in political activism.

We know what will happen to hard pressed families if the Conservatives ever get back into government. It will be exactly what happened last time when their reckless approach to the public finances inflicted interest rate levels of 15% on hard-working families across Britain. Margaret Thatcher famously said there is no such thing as society and left large parts of the country to their fate during her rule.

Cameron and Osborne have opposed all the Government has done to help ordinary families through these tough times, and truly do deserve the title of the “do nothing” party. We can never return to those dark Tory days.

Wide engagement with young people has always been crucial to the Labour Party and electoral success. A progressive agenda has been the cornerstone of our electoral success in recent years; we need to keep on building on this to ensure that we still offer the best choice to the British people at the next general election.